URBAN-ACT RESOURCES

PARTNERS

PUBLICATIONS AND REPORTS

Flagship Reports
This report aims to provide valuable insights into the spatial, economic, social, environmental and governance aspects of cities, offering holistic policy recommendations towards a sustainable urban recovery from these crises.
This vibrant, illustration-based guide highlights how urban planning aligned with nature can address climate challenges and foster resilient cities.
This report assesses the practical progress of spatial planning in addressing climate change within the European Union and selected member states.
This paper showcases global best practices to demonstrate how these approaches, when properly integrated into urban planning, can create low-carbon cities while building resilience against climate hazards.
This study highlights the crucial role of urban planning in empowering cities to meet India’s commitments under the Paris Agreement amidst the escalating challenges posed by climate change.
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ESCAP’s 81st Commission theme study explores Asia-Pacific’s urban future, addressing ageing populations, poverty, and inequality.
This compendium highlights case studies from India’s Smart Cities Mission, showcasing inclusive, resilient public spaces like riverfronts, parks, and markets.
This discussion paper summarises urban climate change-related initiatives in the country and provides strategic recommendations with action plan for mainstreaming climate actions in Urban India.
This report, aligned with China's dual carbon goals, examines territorial spatial planning's role in promoting low-carbon urbanisation.
With the aim of guiding the development of climate-resilient urban plans, this paper examines the URDPFI guidelines to assess current climate measures, identify gaps, and propose recommendations for their enhancement.
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The report examines the key challenges faced by city climate finance matchmaking programmes and explores possible solutions and enabling conditions.
This study aims to establish a common understanding, joint definitions, and systematisation of planning and governance conditions for urban climate resilience and low carbon development synergies across scales among the Urban-Act partners
This publication draws from a Chinese news article and has been revised and translated by the Urban-Act China Component. It presents a case study on how Beijing, the capital of China, addresses its 'Metropolis Disease'.
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Policy Briefs
The Asia-Pacific faces intertwined crises — biodiversity loss, climate adaptation needs, and unsustainable urbanisation. This brief highlights nature-based solutions (NbS) as holistic responses, urging stronger policy integration, localised action, blended finance, and use of scientific and indigenous knowledge to meet CBD Target 12 and build urban resilience.
Asia and the Pacific face rising solid waste challenges, with waste expected to reach 1.9 billion tons by 2050. This brief urges a shift to circular systems to cut methane emissions, highlighting the need for strong policies, investment, and community action to support low-carbon, climate-resilient urban development.
This brief examines Multifunctional Land Use (MLU) planning as a strategy to integrate diverse urban functions such as housing, transportation, water management, green infrastructure, and economic activities, which help cities reduce emissions, improve adaptation capacity, and deliver broader cobenefits.
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EFC Assessments
This is the Fillable Workbook for the National Assessment Tool.
This is the Fillable Workbook for the Subnational Assessment Tool.
The CCFLA/Urban-Act National Assessment Tool aims to enhance urban governments’ access to climate finance by assessing national EFCs.
The CCFLA/Urban-Act Subnational Assessment Tool aims to enhance urban governments’ access to climate finance by assessing subnational EFCs.
This report presents findings from our pilot application in India of the CCFLA/Urban-Act National Assessment Tool, which evaluates countries’ national-level EFCs to mobilize subnational climate finance.
The assessment focuses on four key categories: Climate Policy, Budgent and Finance, Climate Data, and Vertical and Horizontal Integration.
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Working Papers

This Urban-Act Glossary aims to support the Urban-Act project consortium and partners to systematise key terminology, definitions and concepts used in climate-sensitive urban planning in order to encompass common understanding and effective communication among project members, political partners, multidisciplinary experts and practitioners.
Guided by the theme “Regional cooperation for resilient and sustainable urban development in Asia and the Pacific,” the eighty-first session of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (CS81) was held in Bangkok from 21 to 25 April 2025.
The overall purpose of this policy note is to communicate priority policy actions proposed by pilot cities, spur policy discussions towards enhancing the enabling environment for climate-sensitive urban development, and encourage other cities to take proactive measures in dialoguing with national policy makers on priority policy actions.
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WEBINARS (2025)

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Click to Revisit the 2024 Webinar Series!
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TRAINING MODULES AND E-LEARNING

Module 1: Multi-Level Climate Action, Vertical and Horizontal Climate Govern...
Module 2: SDG Localization and Climate Action Synergies
Module 3: Enabling City Climate Finance and Project Preparation

CASE STUDIES

Urban-Act Case Studies
Browse some of the Urban-Act interventions from our beneficiary countries
Total Case Studies: 1
Shanghai City, Suzhou City, Jiashan County | China

ENABLING CITY CLIMATE FINANCE

Accessing climate finance for urban development can be complex. However, cities can improve their chances of securing financing by following two key steps:

Step 1: Assessing Enabling Framework Conditions

Before cities can effectively access and deploy climate finance, it is essential to understand the national and subnational conditions that either support or hinder investment. These are known as enabling framework conditions (EFCs). EFCs are essential for scaling urban climate finance as they provide regulatory clarity, strengthen institutional capacity, mitigate investment risks, and promote stakeholder engagement, creating a conducive environment for national and subnational entities to drive climate action and achieve global climate goals. 

EFCs can also be understood as the foundational conditions that enable the design, planning, and execution of effective climate action interventions, and are therefore integral across most of the climate action project value chain.

To support this process, Urban-Act and the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA) have developed two complementary toolkits to assess both national and subnational EFCs, intended to enable better access to urban climate finance. The National and Subnational EFC Assessment Tool Workbooks, designed for use by national and subnational officials, use a standardized approach to evaluate four dimensions of EFCs: climate policy, budget and finance, climate data, and vertical and horizontal coordination. When used together, the tools can help assess EFCs, facilitate recommendations, and identify areas for improvement. 

National Assessment Toolkit

The tool’s primary target user group is national government officials, but it may also be useful to other stakeholders, including local governments and their partners, city networks, and NGOs.

Subnational Assessment Toolkit 

The tool’s primary target user group is subnational government officials, but it may also be useful to other stakeholders, including local implementers (e.g., project preparation facilities), city networks, NGOs, and national officials. 

Already, EFC assessments have been successfully conducted in Indonesia, India, and Fiji. Please refer to the completed assessments below for inspiration and cross-learning from their experiences. 


Step 2: Project Preparation and Financing through Matchmaking

Once national and subnational enabling environments are understood, cities then need to turn climate action ideas and project proposals into market-ready projects. This is where matchmaking comes in.

Matchmaking in this context refers to helping cities prepare bankable climate action projects ready for implementation finance by connecting them with project preparation facilities (PPFs). PPFs support cities in developing project concepts, conducting (pre-)feasibility studies, and accessing later-stage financing—whether from domestic budgets or international financial institutions. This process ensures that projects meet investor criteria while remaining aligned with national policy frameworks, overcoming existing barriers and enabling climate finance at the city level.

In the climate action project value chain, project preparation and matchmaking act as the bridge between early project definition and securing implementation finance, ensuring that promising ideas are translated into structured, bankable interventions.

Please see the below matchmaking protocol for accelerating access to climate finance for your city.